


Of All the Stars I See, Only You...

by midnightflame



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Fix-It, Idiots in Love, Injury, Injury Recovery, Love Confessions, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Post-Canon Fix-It, Survivor Guilt, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:28:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24581584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightflame/pseuds/midnightflame
Summary: Shiro returns from a negotiation session to an injured Keith. Faced with potential loss, he finally brings himself to talk of all the things long denied.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 25
Kudos: 141





	Of All the Stars I See, Only You...

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! This is a little piece I wrote for [Synnesai's birthday](https://twitter.com/synnesai)! I ran with the post-canon fix-it theme with a bit of angst and confession - I hope you all enjoy it! <3 And happy (belated) birthday again, Synne! Thank you for being such an amazing presence in my life! <3
> 
> (And as always, feel free to come yell at me over on [twitter](https://twitter.com/bymidnightflame))

_"The stars aren’t going to bring him home, Takashi.”_

*

“Where is he?”

“Your quarters.”

“What is he doing there?! He’s —”

“He requested it, sir. As soon as he was pulled from the pod. It’s the only thing he said before —”

“I thought he wasn’t awake.”

There are moments when a pause hits, and it’s like someone was attempting to put the whole world into stasis. Just utter quiet, a breath full of the unknown, and that faint hope that maybe you could still do something to stop it all before it went to some sort of hell you didn’t know you — or the world — were prepared to fight against. 

They haven’t stopped moving through the corridors of the Atlas. Pathways Shiro knows by heart, not because he has walked them thousands of times, but because at some point in linking up with the machine, its map of things became his map of things. And now he navigates the place better than his own heart. 

But he became a stranger to himself years ago. 

That’s not the current issue, however. And it certainly wasn’t anyone else’s problem to deal with. Besides, time spent alone is often time spent confronting yourself, and Shiro has had more time on his hands than he’s cared to deal with some days. Travel across the universe might take less time now than any human imagined they’d see in their current lifetime, but it still left days and weeks navigating the mundane aboard the ship. 

“He’s not,” Veronica finally replies. Her lips purse tightly together as she looks over at Shiro, as if debating the worth of spilling a locked secret. After another moment, she sighs, shrugs then shakes her head. “He woke up long enough to tell everyone we were taking him to your quarters, and as soon as he got there, he passed out again in your bed. Didn’t even wake up when the IV line was put in.”

Something lays siege to his heart. An emotion not entirely foreign, but one Shiro had thought dealt with and defeated years ago. Panic as known only to a heart left unfulfilled, its grip coated with regret. 

“Why wasn’t I told sooner about this?” 

He doesn’t quite choke out the question, but his voice sounds off nonetheless. Like room-temperature milk or _konpeitō_ candy that hits your tongue with a touch of salt to its sugar. Off enough that Veronica raises an eyebrow at him, her gaze clouded over with things Shiro would rather not see. He knows them well enough already. He didn’t need someone else pointing out the obvious. 

“Your mission was important, sir. You said so yourself — unless the ship itself was in jeopardy of falling or Earth deemed it urgent enough to call you back, we weren’t to call you out of any negotiations.”

“And no one saw this as important!?”

Anger clips his tone. At his side, his hands ball into fists. Useless, but it gave his mind the sense that he had done something about the matter.

“It’s not that we didn’t think it important, Captain. . .” Veronica’s gait doesn’t falter. But, she looks ahead now, her gaze trained on the end of the hallway. Just around the curve, another two doors down, would be Shiro’s quarters. Her lips draw to a tight line as she pulls her shoulders back. “But it was a matter we felt we could handle well enough until you finished with your duties.”

Shiro might not have selected his crew, but it’s the one he had helped train. Sometimes, he forgets simple facts like that. Like how all of them had had to learn how to _really_ handle the Atlas those first few months out, and how he had taken the small but necessary steps to guide each of them in this war and its aftermath. . .or how a particular set of eyes could burn like liquid amethyst when the sunlight caught them just right. 

He knows that Veronica made the right decision. The one that allowed all parties to operate as they should given the circumstances they had been under. No unnecessary jeopardization of the mission. No cutting down the price of someone’s life. 

Only his heart put to sacrifice. But, it’s not like that has been the first time. It may not even be the last. 

“Sorry, Veronica, I just. . .”

“I know, Captain.”

“Is. . .”

But Shiro doesn’t finish that statement. Another press of that previous panic against his heart, followed by a push of fear. Put him into battle, and he’ll dive into it, full force with his heart racing, unstoppable until he sees it through. He can do the calculations, estimate the costs of one move or another, and make final decisions with the same cutthroat necessity employed by a thief with his back to the wall. The answer to that question, though. . .Shiro doesn’t know if he can face the potential reply. 

Veronica looks over at him, her expression soft with understanding. “He’s going to be fine. Allura says the pod took him out of a critical state. Now, he just needs time to recover.”

Shiro lets out a sigh. When he had stopped breathing, he doesn’t know. But that first release of air back out into the world sends relief flooding through his system, all that pressure around his heart deflated. The threat against it left empty-handed. 

“Keith’s okay,” he murmurs, as if by putting it into words, he could see it for himself. 

He can’t. Not quite yet. But Keith is waiting for him in his room, asleep but alive. And Shiro can’t help but wonder what new scars he’ll wake up with. 

Pausing at the corner, Veronica nods her head and says, “Then, I’ll leave him to you.”

Normally, he’d be prepared for such a statement and proceed with all the certainty most believe him capable of wielding as their captain. At that moment, however, Shiro stops completely. One hard halt as he rounds the corner, boots thudding against the white floors of the hallway. That’s it? No further words or caution? As though Veronica was sending him off on a weekend getaway. Just that easy. “Isn’t there —”

Veronica cuts him off with a quick lift of her hand, a shake of her head. “I told you. He’s asleep in your bed. He’s comfortable and recovering. One of the nursing staff will likely be by later on to check his vitals and change out his fluid bag. Other than that, it’s just you, Captain.”

That last line hits the air right as her lips curve into what Shiro would have called a smirk had it stayed there long enough to declare itself one. No sooner has she left him with those words, though, Veronica spins around and starts back down the hallway in the direction they had come from. Her shoulders as straight and unrelenting in their set line as they had been while she countered him at every turn in their conversation. 

Seconds later, Shiro now stands there alone, the doorway to his quarters within arm’s reach. Beyond those doors, Keith waits for him. Something whispers that to him, in a voice warm and familiar, and it nearly breaks his heart to listen to it. 

He takes a breath, counts down to ten, then steps over to the panel set in the wall beside the doorway. Placing his hand there, the reader scans it with a quick flash of green light. The door slides open. Inside, Shiro wonders if he’ll find forever in there, or just another story ending too soon. 

The perimeter lights flicker on, and with it, a soft silvery glow illuminates the main room. Everything looks just as he had left it three days ago: his extra uniform pressed and laid out over the back of the couch, still within its plastic covering; dishes set neatly on the drying rack beside the sink, a single glass overturned; several books stacked in alphabetical order on the small table in the dining nook, two chairs pushed neatly beneath it. The only thing out of place is the golden light streaming from his bedroom, a hazy moonlit sort of incandescence as if beckoning him into a world of dreams. They must have set the dimmer on it. 

Two bags sit on the floor by the end of his couch. The luggage he had brought down with him for his stay on Kythra. He’ll have to sort through them, figure out what needs to be washed, what papers need to be filed where. All things he can do later. _Should_ do later. But, there’s an incessant itch to get it all figured out now.

Why delay what he can do now. . .

“That’s not it, is it?” he asks himself quietly. His gaze finds the doors to his bedroom once more just as fear wraps a hand around his heart, sinks its claws into his lungs, and threatens to make him bleed in new ways. All of it telling him he can’t breathe, not here, not in this place. 

“Keith.”

The name comes out like a drowning soul’s last prayer. He’d last spoken to the man weeks ago. Before this last mission had consumed his identity and his presence became a ghost on their timeline. Their chat hadn’t been anything unusual for them. Mostly niceties, talk of their last gathering at the memorial, the due date of Allura’s first child. Lance hadn’t shut up about it since he found out two months ago. But, Keith had admitted to Shiro later on that night that he didn’t have the heart to tell him to shut up about it, even if it was bordering on obsessive at this point. Shiro remembers laughing at that, but he remembers the smile over Keith’s lips more.Too soft. Too open. The beautiful sort of broken that made Keith seem all heart and soul some days.

Shiro would be lying if he said he didn’t know when Keith had learned to smile like that. 

With an exhale, he looks around the living room. A space full of nothing. Everything existed beyond the door to his bedroom. He knows this. He knew it the moment Veronica told him. This room is a place to live in — safe, secure, and his – but it’s not what he lives for. 

Like moth to flame, what else could he do but move toward the fire that called to him? Had been calling to him for years, but somewhere along the way, he thought perishing in another place should have been the way to go. And now he’s standing here at the end of something else, or the beginning. They both start to look the same after a while, starts and ends. Wide endless tracks of space stretching out in front of him, as dark as the forgotten corners of human hearts.

He pauses at the bedroom door, hand poised to knock. Catching himself mid-act, he shakes his head and laughs at himself because who would be there to answer? How does one intrude in their own bedroom? With a smile, sharp and sardonic across his lips, he slides the door open and steps inside. 

On the bed, tucked loosely beneath the pale gray sheets, Keith sleeps. The rise and fall of his chest gives Shiro the reassurance he needed, because for one heart-shredding moment, everything had looked too still. A clear plastic line runs from the catheter taped over the top of Keith’s hand to a metal pole, where a fluid pump steadily churns through numbers indicating the rate per hour, the milliliters administered. The bag looks to be about half-empty. Below that, another small monitor beeps steadily in time with Keith’s heart. Shiro notes the chart resting on the bedside table, along with a pitcher of water that seems to be as full as whenever it was first placed there. 

Keith looks pale, but no worse in the weight category from what Shiro can tell on a first glance. The muscles are still evident in his arm, hardened curves that speak far too little of Keith’s actual strength. Shiro imagines that must have come from the Galra side of him, that insane strength at times. Keith never flaunted it, but he used it as he would any other tool in his arsenal. Testament to his own growth as a soldier. The remnants of a bruise highlight Keith’s left cheekbone. 

“It’s good to have you back,” Shiro says. 

The words seem to echo in the room, or maybe that’s in his own head. In their wake, something seizes his heart, a violent takeover of emotion that leaves him gasping for breath. The world takes on a watery haze. Deep inside, he can hear the echo of Keith’s laughter, feel the curve of his lips as they take on an awkward smirk, the type he always got when he didn’t know what to do with the information being given to him.

The one he wore when Shiro confronted his own mortality. 

But here they are, both alive. Mostly well. 

Clearing his throat, Shiro picks up all the scattered pieces of himself until he’s less of a mess and capable of logical decisions once more. How many minutes passed just standing there? Another ten milliliters worth? A dozen too-even breaths from Keith? A million hurried heartbeats thundering across his own chest? 

“It's good to be back,” he follows up, feeling the pull of a smile at his lips. It’s tight, not quite natural enough, like a marionette trying to stumble into its own will. “If I had known you were here, I would have. . .”

He doesn’t finish that statement. Instead, he heaves out a sigh and looks around his bedroom. Nothing out of place really. He’d left everything folded and put away, the bed carefully made. It still looks carefully put together, the sheets neatly pressed, barely a wrinkle in them despite the body lying there. 

“I’m going to take a shower. Then, maybe, we’ll talk.”

There are things he could probably say, and hadn’t someone told him once that even if they couldn’t respond, they could still hear you? If his voice could reach Keith, could it fix all the fault lines in their relationship? Maybe connecting one-way could be the cosmic superglue he needed to mend all the things he had gotten wrong.

Shiro picks apart his uniform with all the precision of a surgeon plucking shrapnel from a patient. Piece by piece, he takes each item of clothing off, folds it neatly, and sets it on the desk at the far end of the room. He turns on the desk lamp, shining it directly over the pile of clothes. Away from the bed. Once down to his underpants, he makes his way into the bathroom. Keith still continues to sleep, not a single disturbance in his heart rate. 

The water runs cold down his back. He could change the temperature. It would be as simple as putting voice to command and waiting for the warmth in response. Shiro says nothing. Only holds his palm to the wall and lets the water flatten his hair and trace rivers over his skin. Through it all, he listens to his heartbeat, eyes closed, wondering if, from this distance, he could match it to Keith’s. 

They were connected once. Two bodies, two souls, inextricably bound. And then, he started to think about the future, the one he never thought about it. But with another man’s body, his own but not, he had shed off his disease and now had decades that stretched before him and a horizon that beckoned him to run toward it. The idea of fate became warped, he realized. All that time, he had spent preparing everyone else to carry on without him. And Keith had bucked it all off, every word of it. 

But what if one fate had been lost the moment he had died? Maybe that’s how you severed the strings that bound your life — you ended one and started another. The choice hadn’t been his, but he had fought for his second and third chances with all the savage intensity of a lion’s last stand. 

When he emerges from the bathroom, Keith is still asleep, and the fluid pump still dutifully counts down each milliliter, and a heartbeat echoes out across the room with the same steady pace that moves minutes through the day. He rubs a hand towel over his hair as he walks around the bed, back toward the desk. In the closet beside it, Shiro pulls out a pair of black sweatpants from a shelf, then shuts the door with all the careful consideration hospital visiting hours seem to demand. He notes the threadbareness of the bottom hem, a few holes poking through the fabric, and has to stop himself from laughing. 

It’s funny, though, the way we wear our favorite things down. At least, at the moment, it seems funny enough to him. 

With his hair dry, Shiro discards the towel over the desktop, mere inches from the neatly stacked uniform, and steps into his sweatpants. Afterward, he runs his hand along the top edge of the chair, and with a sigh, finally pulls it out from beneath the desk. It’s not the most comfortable thing to sit in, at least not for hours on end, but comfort is the last thing on his mind. Even if his body reminds him of all those long nights spent pouring over documents. 

He sets the chair next to where Keith lies. Right-side of the bed, and the irony isn’t lost on Shiro. Several minutes pass, accompanied only by the consistent murmurings of the machines. What is he supposed to do? 

“You know, if anyone would have told me the next time we’d see each other you would be in my bed, this isn’t what I would have imagined.”

Shiro laughs, a weak thing but honest, at least. Nothing else changes. Just his own bad sense of humor and poorly timed honesty. His gaze drifts over the sheets, the lines of Keith’s body beneath, and the continued rise and fall of his chest, a living metronome. Eventually, his attention falls on Keith’s hand, settled with what seems to be great care over top of the comforter. A small bruise flowers around the catheter site, a purple as deep and vibrant as his Blade’s uniform, and it’s then that Shiro notices another field of them dotting the way up Keith’s arm. From the looks of it, the whole thing had been bruised at one point. Now, there’s just the reminders of what had been, another painful history left to be erased by time. 

He reaches out, gingerly tracing the veins along the back of Keith’s hand. Suddenly and strangely grateful for the blood they still move through his body. 

“I thought maybe you and I might get another chance to talk. After everything. . .I never really got to apologize for it all, though I imagine you’d tell me to stop before I ever really got started.” Another laugh, a little more warmth to it. “So, maybe it’s okay to start like this.”

Something pushes against his chest, a breath held or a protest from his heart. He doesn’t know. The pain feels the same, but he resists the urge to clench a fist over it, and instead, focuses on the movements of his fingers, still looking for the stories Keith’s bruises might tell him. 

“Pidge told me once, after everything went up in smoke, that I didn’t see you, and that had been the problem.” Shiro pauses, gaze flicking to Keith’s face. As placid as ever, not even a twitch beneath his eyelids. He swallows but doesn’t let the words sink into oblivion with it. “That’s not true, though. The problem was that I always saw you. Even when I was spending time with Curtis, I was still looking at you.” 

_"You keep talking like everything about this whole war is unforgettable, Takashi, but that’s not it. There’s only one thing you won’t forget. One thing you won’t **let** yourself forget."_

“For the longest time, Keith, I thought that getting another chance at my life meant picking up the pieces I had left behind and making something out of them. I mean, obviously, I couldn’t go back to everything. Some of them were just. . .gone. . .”

Irretrievably gone. The sort of gone that puts holes in hearts, and just to feel a little more human, you start filling them with regrets. 

Shiro shifts then slides his hand beneath Keith’s left one. Palm to palm, he curls his fingers and draws them over Keith’s skin until he reaches the tips of his fingers. He does this again and again, as if to streamline his own thoughts, like pulling the knots out of netting before letting it sink beneath the waves to catch another round of memories. 

“When they decided they wanted the Atlas to focus on more diplomatic missions, it felt a lot like losing my place again. It also ended up leaving all the clean-up battles to the Blades. . .Back then, I didn’t want to tell you how it made me feel. Because I wanted to support you. After everything, you finally decided something for yourself, and I was. . . I was so proud of you, Keith. We all got dragged into things with Voltron, and everything that happened with Black. . .” Shiro sucks in a breath then, but when he laughs this time, there’s a strained note to it. To tell himself it didn’t hurt losing his role as the Black Paladin would be a lie. Even now, the idea of it burnt like acid against his lungs. But, isn’t that how it went with the things left unburied in the back of your mind? “Just so you know, I was never angry at you for that. I lost myself. . .I just didn’t know how lost I had gotten until you finally found me again. Seeing everything you did, though. _Fuck_ , I was proud of you! You turned out just as amazing as I knew you could be.

“That night you told me you were going to stay with the Blades and help them finish things, I remember thinking the same thing. This time, though, you got to make that choice for yourself. It wasn’t something dropped in your lap for you to deal with. You could have taken any number of routes — those were the doors you opened for yourself. And you chose the Blades.”

He still remembers that night. Sitting on the hood of one of the Garrison’s vehicles, staring up at the night sky, a can of lukewarm beer in their hands. Keith had wanted to talk to him. Shiro had wanted to get away from the Garrison. It all seemed like a perfect plan. Then, Keith told him he was going back out there, not with the Atlas, and for the first time since he had met him, Shiro found himself contemplating that future he had never thought he’d get. 

But, like a book full of his heart’s confession, Shiro didn’t want to read any further into it.

“I knew you weren’t saying goodbye that night,” he continues, threading and unthreading his fingers together with Keith’s. Careful of the catheter in place, but at times, unable to help brushing his thumb over the edge of the bruise there. Did it hurt? “But I think maybe part of me took it that way. Well, maybe not so much _goodbye_ but as a step-your-ass-into-the-future-Shirogane sentiment. Back then, everything in my head still felt like a mess, but then Curtis asked me out, and I thought maybe that was the future I was supposed to go walking toward.”

He stops talking. As much as he tells himself he doesn’t know why, Shiro does. He’s always known, just like he knows how the story continues on from there, and when Keith learned to smile like he was trying to convince the world his heart wasn’t bleeding for an unspoken love. 

_"Every time you look at the sky, I can’t help but wonder if you’re trying to pinpoint his location, Takashi.”_

_“You know something like that is impossible, Curtis.”_

_“Yeah, maybe. But, you’ve made a habit of making the impossible your reality. That’s why everyone calls you a hero, isn't it?”_

Keith’s hand is impossibly warm. Shiro presses their palms together, tightening his grip, and bites back the wretched cry he can feel clawing up his throat. The one that came from digging up too many ghosts at once. Dropping his head, he leans over the side of the bed and breathes in the scent of his sheets. A faint lavender, from his favorite detergent. It’s something most of the staff had become aware of, after a comment made too lightly over lunch one day. When it mixed with the scent of his shampoo and body wash, it reminded him of Earth’s forests. And the beauty of Earth’s nature only ever reminded him of Keith. 

Untamable and free. 

“I’m gonna go make myself a cup of tea,” Shiro says quietly, voice muffled by the sheets layered over Keith’s thigh. “I still have that honey one you like. . .”

He doesn’t leave right away. Instead, he sits there, his forehead pressed to Keith’s thigh, light as a butterfly’s dream, and listens to the uninterrupted rhythm of the machines around him. Two hearts still beating, one just slightly out of step with the other. One of these days, Shiro wonders if they’ll become indistinguishable from one another. Is there still a chance for that? Beneath his touch, Keith is still warm, still breathing, still undeniably _here_. He exhales, a single quiet breath, and turns his head to look up at Keith. By shrugging off one fate, had he inadvertently destroyed a whole world of potential futures? 

With one last squeeze to Keith’s hand, Shiro finally pushes himself away. It takes a moment longer to completely untangle his fingers, the act delicate as he attempts to extricate himself with as little disturbance to Keith as possible. Through it all, there’s no change to Keith's heart rate, the beats trudging on and on like they have no concept of time at all. 

The kitchen carries none of the bedroom’s sounds. A world away. Even so, Shiro can hear the echo of those machines in his head. The slow mechanical churning of the fluid pump. Keith’s heart. All of it too vibrant to call background noise. 

He sets up the electric kettle, then pulls down a mug from the cabinet above. Across the cloud-white surface, the Garrison’s logo stares out at him. Unchanged over all these years. It had come with the office, part of a generic congratulations gift when everything had finally settled out months later. Shiro had walked into his office one day to find the small gift basket there, officially welcoming him back to the Garrison team.

Apparently, it had taken some time to go through all the red-tape to declare himself undead. Or was it ‘back to the living’? It’s not like he could say he hadn’t been deceased at some point, even if that had occurred much later than the Garrison had once believed.

He drops a bag of green tea into the mug, only a secondary glance given to another box, blazing gold in color, sitting beside the tea canister. Not allowing himself another thought, he grabs the kettle and pours the hot water into his mug. The kettle doesn’t whistle. It simply shuts itself off when it's done with its duty. His hand stills as that thought runs through his head like an avalanche. A sudden shock of cold violence.

Fear.

That’s the feeling. He turns to look at the wall, knowing his bedroom rests beyond it. And in his mind, the ceaseless murmur of machine and heartbeat, everything telling him Keith is still alive. As if he couldn’t reach out and feel it for himself. Dropping his gaze to his hand, Shiro curls his fingers in toward his palm. He can imagine it, the way Keith’s hand had settled against his palm, alive but without intent to guide it. A liberty he had taken, unable to know how Keith would react to his touch. 

With his mug in hand, Shiro makes his way back to the bedroom. He’d left the sliding doors open, exposing the bed to the view of living area. Pale gold light trickles out, barely pushing past the threshold. As he stands there, Shiro counts the rise and fall of Keith’s chest. One, then two, followed by three and four, one number after another pushing into infinity. 

He looks older now. Keith. There’s less of the youth that had been present, the image that Shiro still seems to carry in his head. Even after Keith had returned with his mother, he had carried that springtime energy about him — young, vibrant, fresh. The energy itself is still there, but now, his face, his form has matured into the man Shiro had known he would become. Not worn by the universe, but accounting for the years nonetheless. Over his right cheek, the scar Shiro could never forget. All of him still beautiful. 

It seems easy to stand there, staring, trying to work through all the time that has passed. Too much silence, too many mistakes. Wondering if there might not be a way to atone, wondering if atonement is even necessary. 

One-sided conversations. A habit Shiro still hasn’t apparently broken.

“Keith, I. . .”

Laughter follows that. Shiro lifts his hand and rakes it violently through his hair. The room smells faintly of his body wash, a bit like rain-cleared skies. A flick of a glance toward the left side of the room tells him that he’d left the bathroom door open. Could Keith register that scent as well? Would he even recognize it as Shiro’s?

Walking over to the bed, he drops his hand and drags his fingertips lightly along the line of Keith’s leg. Back up to where his hand still rests, undisturbed, over the top of the comforter. Shiro sets his teacup down on the bed stand, right beside the too full water pitcher, and takes his seat once more. 

“I’m not even sure what I was going to say just then,” he begins, his fingers inching toward Keith’s hand. He doesn’t touch them this time. Instead, he keeps them a fingertip apart, trying to think of all the things that might fill such a gap. A hope? A dream? All the unspoken between them? 

“I said that night didn’t feel like goodbye, but that’s not true, Keith. The first thing I wanted to say to you then, when you told me you were leaving with the Blades, was to reconsider it. To come back to the Garrison and help me onboard the Atlas. But. . .I couldn’t think of what you would do or be that wouldn’t somehow stifle you again. You have this amazing set of talents now, and even if I had wanted you there, I didn’t know how to utilize you.”

Shiro shakes his head, consumed by the same sudden deafening silence that follows a gunshot. His hand jumps the distance he had left between himself and Keith. Fingers wrap themselves tightly around Keith’s wrist. 

_How many times are you gonna have to save me before this is over?_

“I didn’t want to _utilize_ you,” he admits softly. “I simply wanted you there, and that didn’t seem fair to you. When I knew that you were capable of so much more. The universe needed you, more than I did for once.” Laughter slips out of him, weak and painful, marred by the heartache of truth. “I never stopped looking at you. The funny thing was. . .I was the only one who couldn’t see that.

“I think I got pretty good at convincing people of it, too. For a while, at least. Maybe they all wanted something too, or maybe I was just so pathetic at that point, they played along. I don’t think that really matters now. I hurt a lot of people along the way. Including you, Keith. And I don’t know if it’s right for me to apologize for that. . .if an apology is even necessary at this point.”

He lets out a sigh and turns his head to the left. Keith remains unmoved, and maybe, Shiro thinks, that’s for the best. 

“I don’t want to apologize necessarily,” he murmurs after a moment. “It’s taken me a long to get here, and not one part of me feels regret for these feelings at least. The time it took to recognize them, maybe.” More laughter, still heavy, still honest. “I’ve been in love with you for a very long time, Keith.”

Silence saturates the air. Then, a heartbeat stumbles into double time. A three-second interlude out of step with the world as Shiro had walked into it. 

“You heard that, huh?” 

This time, when the laughter bursts out of him, its relief is sharp enough to cut a permanent hole into the silence that had threatened him for so long. 

“Not my best timing, I’ll admit,” Shiro says, only to be stopped by a flutter of movement around Keith’s mouth. “Keith?”

The monitor returns to its even rhythm. Movement vacates Keith’s form. Once again, Shiro is left sitting there with himself, his thoughts and his words. His fingers unravel from around Keith’s wrist. With his index finger, he traces a line along the back of Keith’s hand to his ring finger. Once there, a pause as he contemplates all the things that could have been.

“When you left, I didn’t think my life was over, but it felt a whole hell of a lot emptier. Even though I knew I’d see you again. Coming back to Earth, I felt like I had to let go of a lot of things. It made me realize I'd lost a whole life.

“But, I didn’t lose my love for you. All that time, I thought I was simply letting you go be the man I always knew you could be. Instead, it turns out I was only denying how I really felt.”

With an exhale, Shiro reaches for the mug he had set aside, knowing full well the tea had gone cold and bitter. He’d forgotten to remove the bag still steeping. Even so, he takes a sip and grimaces at the harsh grassy cut of it across his tongue. 

“If you told me I’d be waiting in bed for you after you showered. . .”

The voice sounds like tinder waiting to catch fire. Dry and coarse, but still capable of flaring to life with a single spark. It’s familiar in all the ways that make Shiro’s heart ache, as if it had just found its own rhythm again. After years and years of playing to someone else’s song. He blinks, carefully sets his cup on the nightstand, then stares down at Keith’s hand. His index finger curls lightly around Shiro’s, weak but present and so very warm. 

Shiro swallows. In his throat, there’s a tangle of words and emotions, each caught up inextricably in one another, until the only thing that comes out is a choked half-sob of a sound. “You heard all that. . .”

Keith lets out a tired laugh, reminding Shiro of winter wrapping itself around the bright plumage of fall.

“You should have said something!” Shiro blurts out. Not quite outraged, though embarrassed would cover the sentiment behind his outburst quite well. He jerks his head back and looks up at Keith, who stares back at him through eyes vibrant with life, as if in pure defiance of the darkness swimming in the skin underneath them. 

“I wanted to hear. . .what you had to say. . . .seemed like you needed to. . .talk, Takashi,” Keith says, stopping periodically to take a breath or weigh his words. 

Shiro isn’t sure which, or if both, had been needed. 

“Takashi?”

“That’s your name. . .”

“You never use it.”

“Shiro.”

“Now you’re just messing with me.”

Keith turns his head slowly and grins over at him. It takes effort, but the effect pulls the breath from Shiro’s lungs and leaves his lips wordless. Because Keith looks happy. All at once satisfied with the world and yet strangely expectant. 

“You’re the one who’s been messing with me, Takashi,” Keith says.

Shiro lowers his head, taking Keith’s hand in his. One after the other, he slides his fingers in between Keith’s until it feels like they might finally melt into one whole being. “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long, Keith.”

“That’s not what you’re supposed to say.”

Eyebrow lifted, Shiro tips his head and stares over at Keith.

“ _Tadaima._ ”

How is it the world can be rebuilt and collapse and form itself all over again in a matter of mere seconds? Scrambling for brick and mortar, only to find that he has nothing to do. Everything finds its place with just a single word, and for the first time in a long time, Shiro bows his head and lets out a cry against Keith’s knuckles. 

“ _Tadaima_ ,” Shiro whispers. 

“Welcome home, Takashi.”


End file.
